Touch My...What?

So we got told our film was too polite, so I tried to make my poster the opposite, turns out you actually CAN have too much of a good thing...

After seeing some of these Exploitation Film posters, I am forever changed ...

When is a porno not a porno? When it's ajar...

3 women get told they have to try to get inside the heads of men to make an Exploitation Film, it sounds like the start of the world's worst chick flick. (FYI. I tried to get the Chick Flick team to swap, they wouldn't.) 
Two weeks later...

The finished product, we filmed it twice, edited it 3 times and laughed far too much, here it is...

Tits a plenty.

Exploitation films A.K.A. How many pairs of tits can we get in a film? 

We got put into pairs (we got a three) and were giving a genre and a story line and were told to make a film. We got exploitation films, they're like pornos, only not as classy.

Baskerville ready? Eurostile ready? Three, two one!

I feel like I've been seriously taking fonts and what not for granted, what I once saw for something that you've got to pick when ever you're forced to do an essay, I now see for what they are, a fucking nightmare. Seriously, baseline, x-height, cap height, ascenders, descenders, counters, well dude I know my shit now.

The two fonts I've been given are, and drum roll please...Baskerville Regular, and Eurostile Bold.

Now starting off on t'old Baskerville designed by John, well Baskerville, in the 18th Century, Baskerville (the man not the font) based his work on the work of engravers. Baskerville (the font this time) was popular for book work in the letter press era. Experiments have shown that text writing in Baskerville is 1.5% more likely to make the reader agree with the phrase.




Now Eurostile, Eurostile was designed by Aldo Novarese in 1962, now I'm 99% sure that fonts don't have feelings, but if they did I'd be a little bit hurt if I was Microgramma, because Eurostile was designed to be a better version of Microgramma, very similar fonts but Eurostile has both upper and lower case letters, whereas Microgramma has only upper case letters.

Eurostile Extended Bold is used for
CASIO logo.

Eurostile.

Eurostile.

Baskerville is used for Castleton College in Vermont.

I hate Mood-boards, a blogpost by Abby Pearson.

I hate Mood-boards. The End.

What's that? A Guide to Bus-stop Personas? Why not bud?

My very first university project.

'Mama, I love you'...yeah that's right, I just quoted the Spice Girls, I went there.

Unfinished. Busy girl like, I've got other shit
that needs to be done, Mam keeps asking
me when I'm going to finish it. Soon Mother.

This is my Mam.

I painted her. Twice. And despite the fact these two portraits were both painted from photographs taken within seconds of each other, they look super different, even her facial expressions are different, which is crazy talk because I swear to god there is about 8 seconds in between these photos. But what I'm getting at is, if paintings that are less 'photo realistic' have more character, then why does the black and white makes me smile more? The coloured painting has 'character', but it's not my Mam's character, so if it's not the right sort of 'character' does it really matter how much character a painting has?

 

I let her keep this one, to be honest
I didn't think she'd 'keep' it on the
living room wall for everyone to see.

Dying Art.

Today I, Abigail Jane Pearson, received my first ever letter, not a text, not a phone call, not an email, tweet or facebook message, but a real life letter, in a little white envelope. The thing is, before I wrote the letter to which this was the reply, I'd never written a letter before, naturally I ended up swearing a lot, but I signed and send it anyway. But what I received back was better, it was everything a good letter should be, it had drawings on the envelope, laughs, jokes and even a P.S. but better than anything, it was hand written, someone had actually taken the time to write to me, not type out a letter, but spent their time writing to me. Kinda makes you feel good doesn't it?

What the fuck? Come on guys, sort it out.

My friend Grant tweeted a link today ('tweeted' like on Twitter, I'm down with the kids), the link takes you to a page counting how many times hateful homophobic language is used everyday on twitter, and as of 8:48pm this is what it looked like:

And those figures are just for one day.

Look at today's statistics here.

Come on guys, something's got to change.

Stats. for use of 'faggot', 'so gay', 'no homo' and 'dyke' from July 5th-September 30th 2012.

I wish I was Sir David Attenborough. AKA Project One: Take Two.

It's just the voice, he just sounds so good, wish I sounded like that.

For our first project we decided to do the bus stop...but with a twist, we're putting a safari/nature documentary twist on things and treating each classic bus stop group as an animal and giving it it's own safari profile...

Keep you posted.

Also check out the hydroplaning dolphins, too cool like.

Any Excuse.

And I mean literally ANY excuse to google Downton Abbey,
and I am there.

 So we're sitting in our 'Design in Context' lecture, and your man Nick's going on about jeans, (there was more, I took notes, it's not relevant to this post), and then he goes and says 'For this week everyone's going to be assigned a decade from 1920 up until 1990, and they've got to design a character from that decade', and all I can think is 'Bro I need 1920, I fucking love Downton Abbey' and so I'm sitting there, edge of seat style, praying for the 1920s thinking, 'I'm never going to get this.' and I'm sitting there and I'm like the 50th person on the list and the girl in front of me in the list gets called and Nick says '1990' and I know right there and then that I am getting the 1920s, don't worry though, I didn't squeal, I played it cool and was all like 'Oh 1920s? I suppose that's cool.'

Now as much as I love Anna and Mr. Bates their drab servant wear can in no way compete with the likes of Chanel and the Marcel wave, really it would be like setting a kitten on a rottweiler that hasn't be fed in 6 months, so I'm not even going to bother sticking picture of servants on here. And the men? Well a suit is a suit right?

But dude, check out the 20s goodness, now I am talking class, look at them. The hat's man, look at the hats, the dresses, the hair, it's all good.

The Marcel Wave

Chanel poster,
she thinks she's something like.

Also keep going down and you'll find the trailer for Downton Abbey series 3, now if anyone asks it's there for 'reference to costume', but really I just love Downton Abbey, seriously, it's on tonight at 9pm, check it out.

Old People know their shit.

Close call.

The only two horrible old people
I know, and they're fictional.

They rock.

Stealing wallets like.
Why Sidney? Why?

On Friday I got on the train home from university, finding a complete lack of seats I sat at a table opposite an elderly man who smiled at me. Having been up at 6:30am and 5:30am every other day that week I fell asleep quick sharp. When I woke up I felt like I was dying and after some severe baby dinosaur noises I look up to see the old man staring me right in the face, he smiled again at me and, I shit you not, said 'Life's tough some times', I thought, fuck that's deep, but I knew what I wanted to say back to him, I wanted to say 'Yes sir it is, it's tough, life's hard, you should know you're old, you've seen so much, you've done so much, you've loved, you've been loved, you've lost. You've probably got kids, you've watched them grow, you seen them laugh and seen them cry. You've felt heart break, pain, happiness. You've probably seen real beauty, you've looked into the eyes of someone who loves you, you've got regrets, you miss old friends. You've seen war, the first moon landings, the first female Prime Minister, the first black US president, you were there for the start of the NHS, the Labour Party, you saw the death of a King, the coronation of the new queen, you saw rock and roll first hand. You know more than anyone that life is tough.' That's what I wanted to say , but I didn't what I actually said was 'It is.' and rolled back over to sleep. My real point is though that, that old man didn't have to smile at me, he didn't have to watch me and my stuff as I slept, he didn't have to tell me that life was tough, but he did, all the hard stuff that people see, that makes them hard and bitter, that when you see a young person being a dick, the stuff would make you say 'Well they've had a hard time', all those things that this man had time to see plenty of , it hadn't made him horrible. Which got me thinking, old people are fucking awesome, they've seen it all, they've done it all, and still just keep it real.

All you need is love...

...love is all you need?

My friend Calvin asked me to paint him a picture of the Beatles, because he loves them, like too much, like no one should love the Beatles, or in fact any band that much. Especially seeing as the Beatles are the 5th most overrated band on the planet ( U2, One Direction, Foo Fighters and Coldplay, in that order). But he really loves them, I think they're just okay, but to him they're awesome, so does that make them awesome? Is one man's 5th most overrated another man's treasure? Does the ability to play your instruments perfectly define a good band? Or is it passion and your ability to make people love what you do? Same for artists, if you can't or just don't paint with photo-realism, is passion enough to get you through? And the risk of sounding like a cheesy bastard, is love really all you need?

I swear I will get it finished one of these days.

Lights in the North...

The Northern Lights

Click here to find out how the Northern Lights are formed.

I'm not going to try and write a funny passage because, lets be fair...these pictures speak for themselves.

George Karbus took these photographs of the Northern Lights from under the ice.

Photos from above the ice, taken by George Karbus.